'Game Of Thrones': Isaac Hempstead-Wright On Bran

April 27, 2014 01:34 PM EDT

Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) has had it pretty rough on “Game of Thrones.”

Shoved out of a window by Jaime Lannister in Season 1, he came back to life only to find his dreams of becoming a knight were crushed, with the loss of his ability to walk. And, as he started developing abilities, like being able to see things, his visions brought him plenty of bad news – like the beheading of his father, Ned Stark. In Season 4, Bran spent so much time in the body of his direwolf, Summer, he nearly didn’t come back. But, a recent visit to a godswood tree (which brought about visions and voice calling him from far, far north) may have helped change the course of his future.

AccessHollywood.com found out from Isaac himself what’s next for Bran, the surprise twist he’d like to see happen for his character, and the notable scientific organization who Tweeted him, which meant more to the young actor and student of science than meeting any celebrity.

AccessHollywood.com: What did they actually tell you Bran was doing (in the script), when he touches the godswood tree? Isaac Hempstead-Wright: So that is the moment where Bran absolutely knows where he’s going. He’s had this inkling that there’s somewhere he has to go, and there’s something pulling him towards there, but he doesn’t know exactly where or why or what it is, but the second he sees that vision he knows, ‘I need to go to this place, ‘cause this is going to happen and this has to happen,’ because this is hugely important for his power.

Access: How is he feeling at this point? So much tragedy has happened in his life. … Not long ago he was guarding Winterfell for his brother. Isaac: I know. And that’s the sad thing. He’s been through so much. He lost his legs – he wanted to be a knight. That was the only thing he really wanted, then his family all went to King’s Landing, then he lost his father, then he lost his home, then he lost his brother and mother, and basically, he was on his own with nobody but a giant, a younger brother and a Wildling lady. And that’s tough for him and it’s a testament to his character, the fact that he didn’t sort of give up and die, but he did continue to fight and strive towards something. And what’s great about warging in this, is it is actually something he wants to do now. Lots of stuff has happened to him, but he’s now firmly on his way to whatever this thing is and he knows it has to happen and it’s definite.

Access: He gets a warning about warging, before the tree moment, from Meera Reed. How worried should people be about Bran after that? He was ready to disappear into his direwolf, Summer. Isaac: And I would completely sympathize with Bran if he wanted to just go into the wolf, because frankly, it would probably be a much better life for him than the one he has because finally being able to go back – to be what he used to be and run about and jump and be energetic, I would completely understand if he just wanted to go into the wolf. But, yeah, I think that’s a definite worry because who wouldn’t want to [be] in that situation.

Access: Plus, you get to be a direwolf. Isaac: Which is pretty cool!

Access: Why do you think he’s so trusting of this brother and sister pair – Jojen and Meera? Isaac: He doesn’t really have an option but to trust them. … He saw Jojen in his dreams, which is weird, but I suppose that’s the thing saying, ‘Well, I saw him coming. This is clearly something important.’ … I think Bran definitely feels he can absolutely confide in Jojen because he’s been through the same things and he understands absolutely everything that’s happening with Bran.

Access: Hodor is your rock in this. Would you like to see a development in Hodor where we actually learn a little bit more about him? Isaac: Absolutely.

Access: Is that something we might be able to see? Isaac: I would love to. I would love to find out that actually he’s a Pokemon, because all he says is ‘Hodor.’ That’s one of the theories.

Access: Do you think Bran realizes how important he is in the Stark family line? He is the second to last male heir. Do you think that weight is on his shoulders yet, of being a Stark… Isaac: There’s not only that weight, that he’s basically one of the only ones holding on to the Stark name and stopping it from disappearing completely, but he’s also got this great power, with the warging and the sight, so he knows that clearly he’s got some kind of magical thing, which could be absolutely vitally important in keeping the Starks around, so I guess Bran knows that he can’t really mess up…. He’s not getting distracted. He’s staying on the path to whatever it is [he] has to do.

Access: Have they told you what [a really powerful] warg can do? Say for example, can a warg go inside a White Walker? Isaac: I would love to see that. I wanna be a White Walker! That would be awesome!

Access: Do you think Bran would be a good person to end up on the Throne with all he’s learning? Isaac: I hope, kind of, that Bran becomes a bad guy because I think it would be quite fun for him to sort of become one of the sort of White Walker leaders and charge down and basically reclaim everything as sort of the magical mystics.

Access: Winter is coming, led by Bran. Isaac: Yeah!

Access: On a dead horse. Isaac: Yeah! Oh my gosh!

Access: What was it like to say goodbye to Jack [Gleeson, who played Joffrey] this season? You haven’t had many scenes together, but he’s been around since the beginning like you have. Isaac: People are dropping like flies every season and I guess, in a way, you just get used to knowing that it’s finite, not only the whole series, but every character has got an end before the final end. And particularly with Michelle [Fairley – Catelyn Stark] and Richard [Madden – Robb Stark] last year – losing them was really sad because we’d been with them since sort of the pilot as well, like Jack. And Jack… I remember at the very beginning we were all sort of in the same boat. Jack… I can’t remember exactly how old he was when he started. I think he was about 18, 17 or maybe he was 16. So we’d all kind of grown up and been shaped a lot by the show.

Access: There are a host of cool people who love this show. Have you gotten to meet anyone you admire or whose work you’ve enjoyed through this experience? Isaac: There’s quite a cool physics Twitter account and they Tweeted something about ‘Game of Thrones,’ so I Tweeted them back. Then, they Tweeted back, which is super surreal because I would never [have] been able to… sort of talk to them if I hadn’t been a member of ‘Thrones.’ And people like [UK talk show host] Jonathan Ross, [he] was really exciting to meet because you’d always watch him on the weekend and watch his chat show.

.@FQXi tweeted about GoT! Perhaps Hodor is an intermediate vector boson: he carries Bran, who possesses the force. Haha.